Basu: Rape culture remains

A national attitude change is necessary to stop sex crimes

Jun. 11, 2013

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Twenty-one years ago, Grinnell College student Tammy Zywicki, then 21, was driving back to school from her home in New Jersey when her car broke down on an Illinois highway. Her body was found in Missouri nine days later.

I remember thinking what a freak coincidence it was that a predator happened to be driving by just when the young woman developed car troubles. I’m not sure I’d react that way today. We’ve seen so many abductions, rapes and killings since then that at times — especially lately — it feels as if there’s a sexual predator lurking around every corner.

The latest victim is 15-year-old Kathlynn Shepard of Dayton, who was kidnapped with 12-year-old Dezi Hughes as they were walking home from school. Michael Klunder lured them into his truck with offers of lawn-mowing jobs. Dezi escaped; Kathlynn’s body turned up in a river last week. Klunder killed himself.

Ten months earlier, Lyric Cook-Morrissey and Elizabeth Collins, 10 and 8, respectively, disappeared while riding their bicycles in Evansdale. Their bodies were found 20 miles away.

In Cleveland, Ohio, Ariel Castro allegedly held three women for years in a basement, raping, punching and starving them. Rapes in the military could run as high as 19,000 in just the last year, according to the secretary of defense. In Montezuma, a former high school teacher was just arrested for sexually abusing four students ages 12 and 13. Add in Jerry Sandusky and a rash of college rapes, and it feels as if sexual predators are ubiquitous.

So when women gather these days, and the talk turns to violence, the sense of outrage is almost eclipsed by one of defeat. Nearly five decades after the women’s movement began raising awareness about crimes of male power and control, they continue.

The statistics suggest sexual assaults against women are on the decline. From 1995 to 2010 the annual rate fell 58 percent, from 5 victimizations per 1,000 females age 12 or older to 2.1, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Ironically, some of the highest rates between 2005 and 2010 were in rural areas.

Yet to hear some elected officials talk, it hardly feels like attitudes have changed. Former U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., and Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., spew misinformation about “legitimate rape” not causing pregnancy or “the hormone level created by nature” being responsible for military sexual assaults.

To Bonnie Campbell, who headed the U.S. Department of Justice’s Violence Against Women Office during the Clinton administration, it feels like a backlash. The right laws are in place in Iowa after much hard work, she says. But as for the culture, “I must tell you, it doesn’t seem like it’s changed, and I want to believe it has.”

Campbell began addressing violence against women as Iowa’s attorney general in 1985. She says she’s puzzled by the sexual assaults on college campuses — even after heavy doses of awareness-training and after colleges are required by law to make public their rape statistics.

Her federal office worked to reform the criminal justice system, train law enforcement officers and fund state victim assistance programs. It set in place protocols. Yet even now, when rapes are reported, too often the victims are blamed and nothing happens to the perpetrators, she says. Even after rape exams became standardized at hospitals, rape kits with perpetrators’ DNA languish for years, unprocessed.

“Why do men batter and rape?” Campbell asks. “Because they can, and most of them don’t pay a consequence.”

She believes having more women on police forces and in office would help create a cultural shift.

There is more help for survivors and more men are fighting violence, says Beth Barnhill, director of the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault. But “there’s still way too much wink and nod about objectifying women.” While police officers and prosecutors are more aware, “we have not done as well at making sure it doesn’t happen in the first place.”

But Barnhill doesn’t favor toughening Iowa laws, and warns that not all sex offenders should be treated the same. Sexually violent predators including pedophiles already must get enhanced penalties, she notes. Klunder, convicted of two kidnappings, was sentenced in 1992 to 41 years but released after 19. Responding to calls from the public, Gov. Terry Branstad now says the Legislature should revisit Iowa’s time-served law, which allows certain convicts to earn 1.2 days for each day of successful participation in prison programs. But under today’s requirements, sexual predators must first serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. Predators considered at risk of reoffending can also be civilly committed after completing their sentences.

In Klunder’s case, part of the problem may be in how he was charged. Though the Department of Corrections had enough evidence to require him to get sex-offender treatment, his charge did not include a sexual offense.

It’s understandable that such horrifying cases would lead to a search for quick, quantifiable solutions. But changing mindsets is a long-term process that demands we all be actively engaged — making sure laws are enforced; educating kids early on to treat men and women as equals.

Kathlynn Shepard will always be that grinning 15-year-old, just as Tammy Zywicki will always be that 21-year-old college student. We can honor them by shaming and shunning whoever degrades women or glorifies harming them.